Monday, March 12, 2012

Mexico police nearly nabbed El Chapo

Much like the late Osama bin Laden, the man the U.S. calls the world's most powerful drug lord apparently has been hiding in plain sight.

Mexican federal police nearly nabbed Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman in a coastal mansion in Los Cabos three weeks ago, barely a day after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with dozens of other foreign ministers in the same southern Baja peninsula resort town.

Jose Cuitlahuac Salinas, Mexico's assistant attorney general in charge of organized crime investigations, confirmed on Sunday that there was a near miss in late February in the government's efforts to arrest the man who has become one of the world's top fugitives since he escaped prison in a laundry truck in 2001.

"We know he was there," Salinas told The Associated Press.

The incident fuels growing speculation that authorities are closing in on Guzman, and that the government of President Felipe Calderon is determined to grab him before his six-year term ends in December.

Calderon can't be re-elected, and his National Action Party is trailing in the polls ahead of the July 1 presidential vote. Many Mexicans say they are weary of his government's assault on organized crime that has left more than 47,000 dead and Guzman stronger than ever. The arrest of the top capo likely would be a political boon to the ruling party.

Two men and two women in the house where Guzman allegedly had been staying were detained and are in the custody of the attorney general's organized crime unit, Salinas said. He did not release their names but said at least one of the men served as a pilot for Guzman. Federal police also found arms in the house, Salinas said, but he did not offer details.

The raid was led by Mexican authorities. Salinas would not say if the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had any involvement. The DEA referred all comment to the Mexican government.

Since his prison escape, Guzman, 54, has transformed himself from a middling Mexican capo into what the U.S. Treasury Department calls the world's most powerful drug trafficker.

Calderon's government says it doesn't rank the 15 cartel leaders on its most-wanted list, but Guzman's Sinaloa cartel controls trafficking in nearly half of Mexico. Much of the rest of the country is in the hands of the Zetas cartel.

U.S. law enforcement officials say no other cartel has the international cocaine distribution networks of Sinaloa, which is also making a major push into methamphetamines in Mexico and Central America. Guzman appears annually on the Forbes magazine list of the world's billionaires, and also has been named by the magazine as one of the world's most powerful people.

He has a $7 million bounty on his head in Mexico and the U.S., and teams of law enforcement agents from both countries are devoted to his capture.

Guzman is often rumored to be hiding in the remote hills of his home state of Sinaloa, or in other locations, including Argentina for a time. Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina said he has reports that Guzman has been in his country recently as well.

One U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks quoted Mexican Defense Secretary, Gen. Guillermo Galvan Galvan, as saying that Guzman moves frequently among 10 to 15 locations to avoid arrest, and has a security detail of up to 300 men.

Salinas said he didn't know if this time Guzman was in the house with only four other people and lacked the expected entourage of bodyguards and surveillance equipment, which reportedly normally includes helicopters. He would not give details of how the operation was carried out or what the four may have told authorities.

"That's classified information," he said.

Rumors also surface regularly that police have shown up in various hideouts just as Guzman is escaping out the back door. Law enforcement and military have said they were close before, including raiding a remote Sinaloa town where Guzman got married in 2007 hours after the wedding.

His narrow escapes raise the suspicion that he could be getting tipped off, including this time.

A series of bus burnings and narco road blocks in Guadalajara on Friday fueled new talk that authorities had captured Guzman. The commotion instead was related to the arrest of a leader of a smaller cartel, the New Generation, believed to be aligned with Guzman.

"We're still searching," Salinas said. When asked if authorities are close, he just smiled.

Salinas wouldn't say when federal police received the intelligence that Guzman was in one of several exclusive subdivisions of million-dollar homes between the Cabo San Lucas Highway and the beach. The operation ran several days starting on Feb. 21, just as the city had been filled with top security and foreign ministers meeting in advance of the June G20 countries, which will also be held in Los Cabos.

Salinas said he did not know the exact location of the house where the operation took place. But municipal police commander Alfonso Meza said it is located in the exclusive Punta Ballena development overlooking the Gulf of California. The home is still sealed off by the attorney general's office and the organized crime division, he said.

The Calderon administration has long been accused of protecting Guzman as it carried out major hits on his enemies, dismantling the rival Arellano Felix and Beltran Leyva cartels and taking out top leaders of the Gulf Cartel. But more recently, the Calderon government has come up with major hits on Sinaloa. In the last six months, it has netted Guzman's major methamphetamine manufacturer, a major cocaine shipper and Guzman's security chief, seizing computer files and other valuable data.

Los Cabos, at the tip of Baja peninsula, is considered one of the safest locations in Mexico, a favorite vacation spot among Hollywood stars and thousands of U.S. tourists who still venture to Mexican beaches despite the violence that plagues much of the country.

But the peninsula also has been frequented by drug lords. Federal police arrested one of Mexico's most violent drug traffickers, Teodoro Garcia Simental, known as "El Teo," two years ago in the home he owned in La Paz, north of Los Cabos.

The U.S. Coast Guard in 2006 arrested Francisco Javier Arellano Felix, head of the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix gang, as he was sport fishing off the coast of Los Cabos.

Osama bin Laden, the United States' most wanted man for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, was killed by commandos last May in his compound an upscale suburb of Islamabad, Pakistan.

Like Guzman, many had speculated he was hiding out in rugged mountains. Instead, he was found a short distance from the country's main military academy.

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what i dont get is why is chapo da first person dey wanna get wen lazca ans z40 is little but worse den him, i would say catch da 2 first den trying to catch chapo, i think if dey catch chapo mexico will b much worse den it is, as for mayo and azul dey can b left alone

How can Chapo "escape out a back door" in a world where we have have satellites that can read the fine print of newspaper from outer space? This isnt some small time pusher that the local police are after. You would think Mexican and U.S. intelligence orchestrating a search on the worlds most dangerous drug lord would have proper surveillance. Am I missing something here?

" Many Mexicans are weary of Calderons war on drugs" Thats one hell of a vote of confidence, what does this say about many Mexicans,for sure the Media in Mexico Has failed to encourage and inflame the public,the last article posted by Chivas is a great example of what SHOULD have been coming out of Mexico every day. The agressive corruption,license to steal, arrigance of political/govt people in Mexico is truly Mind boggeling. Problem is NOBODY DOES ANYTHING,just wait the PRI will be back and here we GO!!!

If they get Chapo before Lazcano or Z40 all hell will break lose. Chapo along with CSG are the only ones killing Zetas daily. Los Zetas do way much more damage to innocent ppl. Los Zetas do the most damage to Mexico and Chapo does the most damage to the US. Who do you think the US want Mexico to catch first? US don't care about what the Zetas are doing to Mexico because they don't push the amount of dope Chapo does in the US.

On another note: The richest man in the world is from Mexico, while also the biggest drug lord in the world is from Mexico too!

Bill gates is only # 2 because hes given away almost 30 billion, if not hed blow by Helu, who else do you know that has eradicated polio single handedly? This is irrelevant to the story posted....if mexico is so great why are they still a 3rd world country?

No offence here but, everyone claims to have eradicated polio. Rotary club, different church groups, and ofcourse Bill. Also, we can also say the same about Slims fortune.- if it wasn't for the market slump caused by the housing crisis, slims wealth would of, how did you say, "blow by Gates"

Sounds like they are close, but really will it do any good? Everything I've seen so far is worse when they catch a notorious cartel leader. I mean really, what good will it do besides give Calderon a trophy. Not trying to start a big debate and I'm not a sypmpathyser, but really say they get him, will 1000's of cartel hitmen, runners, etc stop criminal and violent activity?

Chapo has been working for the US Government for a long time now, the process is the same one that has been employed on different dictators around the world..

At first they help them out, find a way to grab him by the balls and slowly control his actions. By the time they turn him in, "the end of his term", they will already have somebody else to work his role. They will make it public that they have caught Lazcano and/or 40 before Calderons term is over, that will foreshadow the fact that el Chapo is still out there and will give the pan some ++s for their new puppet, helping him get into office. Keep in mind Lazcano had already been detained, I don't know about Miguel, but I'm guessing probably so.

Why does this say Chapo was almost nabbed in a raid in a remote Sinaloa town hours after his wedding in 2007? Everyone knows that he was married in Canelas, Durango in 2007. Also, the military were supposibly the ones providing security for Chapo's wedding. There were several personal aircraft and military helicopters there, since Canelas has their own airstrip. It is a small town, but with alot of history and money. This is supposibly where Nacho Coronel is from, although I have heard reports that he was born in Veracruz and later moved to Durango.

How many years did it take us to find Bin Laden again? 10+? And that's the decade of the U.S. sending their military no-holds-barred after the bastard. He was still public enemy number 1 long before that even.

I live in Culiacan and i really feel sorry for all those innocent people that live here, El Chapo does no harm to all the people over here its Los Zetas that are killing anyone who gets in their way!! why dont they focus on them?? I really dont think they will catch el Chapo any time soon, he has always been 50 steps ahead of every one, and no he just can't walk out the back door, i have seen several convoys that he has been in the city and he never does harm, just dont mess with him and everything is fine, can you imagine if he ever gets caught??? when they killed his supposed chief of security in Quila, things are now worse, It will get worse in Culiacan and everywhere else. hoping and praying for the best.

Its been stated before by american officials, its not too big of a deal locating him, getting him is the hard part. When they do locate him he carries his small army of 500 men with him who always fight back, not too long ago the mexican govt decided not to arrest him but just kill him by bombing where he was at. He got word of it and fled as soon as possible, none the less his men that were there still fought, even taking down a chopper. Before they reached his location his army shot rocket propelled grenades, sam 7s (anti aircraft missles), and mortars at the mexican military. It was another one of those big stories the media decides not to report, for the reason, I believe, that the mexican military lost a lot of men that day.

ya I'm not buying this at all. Like an original poster stated... with the surveillance we posses today there is no way they dont know where he is and there is no way he "escaped" out the back door without them being able to track him. Utter ridiculousness. They must really feel mexican people are retarded and tell them these stupid little stories to keep them on their side. Just like ElChapos wife going to the USA to have have a baby and only later they admit to knowing she was there but said they have nothing on her so that let her be.. lol really? You have nothing on her? OK, I believe you... duh

I'm rooting for the Chapster to stay one step ahead from the long arm of the law. In Mexico it's not a very long arm but nonetheless I hope they never capture him. Calderon who himself is a chapito has lost this war with in-effective policies and resources. I know it's tough to win with so much corruption everywhere but it all started with dirty Mexican politicos like him. They are the biggest crooks in all of Mexico. In any event this is just another reason to write another corrido about el Chapito de la Lomas.

Chapito de la Lomas? I dont think so..... The real Chapito de la Lomas is in jail, one of the guys caught up in the middle of the war of CDS VS BL, even as nephew of El Chapo he still pled allegiance to BL family, specifically Alfredo Beltran